CHICAGO�More than 200 Black newspaper publishers convened here June 14-17 for their 60th annual conference, demonstrating the strength of the Black press.

The National Newspapers Publishers Association (NNPA) conference was packed with workshops, Founders and Past Presidents receptions, a youth publisher-for-a day program, luncheons and a Merit Awards dinner featuring national activist the Rev. Al Sharpton, who served as keynote speaker.

Microsoft was among this year�s first-time conference sponsors. Gas company Texaco and restaurant chain Denny�s, who both have faced high-profile discrimination lawsuits, also served as two of the 30 corporate sponsors.

The convention�s workshops focused on the digital divide, the internet and its role, investigative reporting and Blacks and the vote, among other topics.

Rev. Sharpton, founder of the New York-based National Action Network (NAN), highlighted the challenges faced by the Black media and how he, NNPA publishers and a host of national Black and Latino media leaders have spearheaded a movement to demand respect for Black and Latino dollars.

"People should not be allowed to take money out of our community and feed the media of other communities with our dollars," the controversial pastor told the publishers during his Merit Awards address. "We tell corporations that you can do what you want with your money, but you can�t do what you want with our money. If you want to support just white media, that�s where you should sell your products. (Blacks) should not go begging for support when we are contributing billions of dollars to the economy.

"We want to know what is your advertising budget, what percentage of that budget goes to our community and compare that to what your consumer dollars are and what percentage of those consumer dollars come out of our community. There are very few companies, if any, in this country that have anywhere near the investment in dollars that they take out of our community. The challenge in the days of the Bible, where Moses led the Children of Israel, was to go and tell Pharaoh to let our people go. The challenge today is to tell our people to let Pharaoh go," Rev. Sharpton said.

Rev. Sharpton also acknowledged the presence of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and his wife, Mother Khadijah, and challenged Black publishers to continue to support the call of Black leaders who fight for the liberation of their people.

Agreeing with Rev. Sharpton that large corporations should not have access to the Black community unless they utilize the Black Press as a vehicle to do so, NNPA President John J. Oliver, Jr., said the question of the need or survival of the Black press arose while advertising began to dry up in the 1970s due to integration that began in the 1960s.

"In the late 1980s, many things began to happen to reconfirm the value of the Black newspaper as an editorial vehicle," Mr. Oliver said. "The O.J. Simpson trial galvanized Black and white perception and you were not going to get a favorable report about O.J. unless you picked up a Black newspaper.

"White folks aren�t sensitive to stories that really reflect major insults to the Black psyche. The lie becomes very visible every time we see things that they don�t see or feel. A white person cannot write an article that is about something that is internally outrageous to a Black person and make that article scream the way a Black writer can," said Mr. Oliver, who publishes the Afro-American chain of papers from his base in Baltimore.

He said the Black community can look forward to the expansion of the Black press� coverage on issues relating to health, the digital divide, education, job opportunities, care for the aging, illegal drugs and crime.

Final Call editor-in-chief James Muhammad noted that it was the Black press that championed the cause of the Million Man March and helped to make it the overwhelming success it was.

"Without the sensitivity and pride that Black publishers brought to their presentations leading up to and after the Million Man March, the attempts to derail and diminish its impact by the white press might have succeeded," he said.

Newly appointed NNPA Executive Director Benjamin T. Jealous said that the blueprint for the future of the Black press lies in its past archives and new technology.

"Fifty years ago, you saw a Black press that took content very seriously and invested in young, often rebellious talent. There�s this myth that that�s impossible in a post-desegregation world, but new technology gives us ways to harness and share talent."

Mr. Jealous said the NNPA is looking at ways to increase the salaries of Black press staff writers and freelancers by allowing them to sell over the Internet to all of the Black papers. The NNPA has set up a national investigative reporting fund that pays for in-depth investigative reports about what�s happening to Black people, he said, adding that the organization is developing a plan to get all of our member papers on-line.

"People have been saying that the Black press is dying or has been dead for 25 to 30 years," Mr. Jealous added. "We have 200 newspapers in our federation that put five million issues on the street every week. Each one of those issues, three people read. That�s 15 million readers.

"We are far from dead. We�re use to thinking of each other as separate parts, when we�re really a part of a much greater whole. It�s about taking the bold step of working together and serving our community in a way that our circumstances demand to be heard," Mr. Jealous said.